I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say it's more appropriate. At this moment, it's more feasible legally, practically and politically.
I agree with Professor Geist that there's an elegance to a fund model. I agree with a lot of things that he's argued about it. Many other academics have promoted it, as well, in other jurisdictions. I see a couple of challenges with it, though, in implementing it.
There are two ways you can put money into a fund. You could create a dedicated tax on platforms. I have learned—I'm not a lawyer—that it could be very complicated legally to do a dedicated tax on a subset of companies in terms of existing trade agreements. If that's not possible, then it has to come from general revenue. If you build a fund coming from general revenue, then someone, somewhere in the government—like we did with the labour tax subsidy—needs to decide what money to put in and what the criteria for that money being given will be.
In my view, both of those things have a far more intrusive government role in the journalism sector than the fund. They're both far more intrusive. Given the context in which we're having the debate about this bill in particular, which I think is far less intrusive, I find it very unlikely that many of the people who are arguing for a fund and have been arguing for a fund through this debate would support that greater involvement of government in the journalism sector.
For those two reasons, I think it is fundamentally difficult.
That being said, I thought that jurisdictions were going to try it in all likelihood. There are models for this potentially being implemented internationally as a global type of fund for global journalism. That's interesting. I think that, as was mentioned earlier, it could be an additive thing so that for some—potentially for local journalism organizations—that model could be applied in other ways. I don't think they are mutually exclusive, necessarily.
Right now, it's incredibly difficult to imagine that fund being stood up in a meaningful way in Canada.